


The Disillusioned

by ariel2me



Series: inspired by [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: No, that was not quite right: not shattering, because that implied a single great crisis. Rather, what happened to human illusions was that they crumbled, they withered away. It was a long and wearisome process, like a toothache reaching far into the soul. But you can pull out a tooth and it will be gone. Illusions, however, even when dead, continue to rot and stink within us. (The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes)Aegon V Targaryen, his thwarted dream for a better realm, and the long, wearying process of disillusionment that eventually curdled his dream into an obsession with dragons.





	The Disillusioned

Later, when it had all come to grief, Aegon would wonder whether it would have been better if there had been one marked and distinct breaking point, an undeniable point of no return where everything was changed, and changed forever. He would wonder whether it would have been better if there had been one momentous occasion where his dream was crushed and destroyed completely, irreversibly, never to recover.

The gradual nature of it, he had come to suspect, was what ended up causing the most damage, corroding the spirit and allowing the poison to seep in. The back-and-forth, the false sense of hope and recovery, the temporary reverses of his reversals, and of course, the optimism, always the optimism:  _Next time. Next time, it will be different. Next time, it will be better. Next time, I will find a way._

A way to bring about his dream of a better realm, a realm with peace, prosperity and justice for  _all_ , from the highest born to the lowest.

He never found a way. And in not finding a way, he lost his way even further.  

*

A story (or a lesson, as the old man’s stories were often lessons in disguise) that was passed down from Ser Arlan of Pennytree to his squire the future Ser Duncan the Tall, and from Ser Duncan to his squire the future King Aegon the Unlikely: A frog dropped into a cauldron of boiling water would jump away immediately, eager to escape certain death. But another frog, dropped into a cauldron of water that was being heated up very slowly, would remain in that cauldron, lulled into a false sense of security, not realizing the true danger it was in, until it was far too late to save itself.  

*

 _Kings rise and fall, and cows and smallfolk go about their business._ This was another one of Ser Arlan’s favorite aphorisms.

“Smallfolk go about their business because it doesn’t matter to them what kind of king is sitting on the throne?” the boy who would grow up to be Aegon had asked Ser Duncan, eyes wide with incredulity. “Doesn’t it make a difference to their lives, whether a good king is sitting on the throne, or a bad king, or a cruel king?”

“It makes a difference, of course,” replied Ser Duncan. “How could it not? But even a good king tends to pay little attention to the sufferings and the travails of the people at the bottom. And smallfolk are used to this, used to being ignored by the great kings high up there on their thrones, used to going about their business, because what other choice do they have?”  

*

 _A true knight protects the weak and the innocent._ This was not merely one of Ser Arlan’s aphorisms. This was a sacred duty of knighthood, a tradition dating back to thousands of years ago. 

 _A true king protects his people, especially the most vulnerable among them._ This, in Aegon’s eyes, was a sacred duty of kingship.  

*

His second son, the one Aegon had named in honor of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, thought that it would have been better if Aegon had never dreamed his dream for a better realm at all. It would have been better, claimed Jaehaerys, if Prince Maekar had not allowed his youngest son to squire for a hedge knight, if Prince Aegon had not travelled the realm while masquerading as Egg the bald-headed squire, if Prince Aegon had not witnessed what he thought he witnessed, had not drawn the conclusions he drew based on what he thought he witnessed.

(Unlike his older brother, who was named in honor of the hedge knight Aegon had squired for as he travelled the realm, Jaehaerys had always been skeptical of his father’s  _“_ peace, prosperity and justice for all _”_  notion. Duncan had believed, sincerely, in his father’s dream for a better realm, perhaps even  _too_  much, for he went even further than Aegon, envisioning a world where there was no division at all, in any kind of form, between the highborn and the lowborn.)

“You made too much of what you saw as a boy, as a boy ignorant of the true ways of the world,” said Jaehaerys to his father. “Things were never as bad as you believed.”

 _You did not know what you were really seeing, and you drew the wrong conclusions from what you saw, so it would have been better if you had never seen it at all._  This was the point Jaehaerys was trying to make.

Aegon disagreed, vehemently. Of course it was better to have your eyes wide open, than to be willfully blind. The sufferings he had witnessed, the travails of the people whose lives were lived on the margins, at the mercy of powerful lords and kings; he would never, in a million years, wish that he had been blind to that.  

And having had his eyes opened, having seen the extent of the sufferings and the struggles, what choice did he have except to act, when he finally had the chance to enact changes, to make a difference? To do nothing, to close his eyes and do nothing in the face of such suffering, such oppression, would have been a crime beyond proportion, he believed. 

He still believed in the righteousness of his cause, to the very end. The dream was not the problem, had never been the problem. The problem was what came after.

*

He had not been naïve, he thought. He understood full well that privilege, once ensconced, was hard to remove, hard to even make a dent into, no matter how cruel and unjust that privilege was to those who were denied it. “You are trampling on our gods-given rights and privileges,” screamed the many dissenting lords, completely ignoring the fact that those rights and privileges were codified in  _man-made_  laws, or the fact that some of those rights and privileges were not just trampling on but also destroying thelivesof those who were not fortunate enough to be born into a certain station in life.

The privileges of the few, the few who had always been on top, weighed in balance against the very lives of the many, the multitudes who had always suffered the most. Aegon had no doubt in his mind which should be given precedence.

*

Perhaps if the marriage alliances with the Great Houses of Westeros that his wife Betha had carefully arranged had all come to fruition, the opposition to his reform would not have been so vehement. Betha certainly believed this, and was frustrated by his inability, or his unwillingness, to force their children to comply.   

On the other hand, there was no telling for certain how much of a difference this would have made. There was the example of his good-son Ormund Baratheon, the Lord of Storm’s End who initially supported the king’s reform, but was almost felled by clamors for a rebellion by the stormlords, until he finally decided that he, too, was opposed to any kind of reduction in the rights and privileges of lordship.

*

Or perhaps, Aegon thought, he had shown his hand too early, had alienated too many lords when he was still a prince, when his father was king. He meddled too much in the affairs of those lords, and tried too hard to convince his father to enact laws that would protect the peasants under their rule; this was the accusation leveled against him, and brought up again and again over the years.

Perhaps he should have waited, waited until he was actually king before showing his hand.

But at the time, he had no notion that he could ever be king. The moniker Aegon the Unlikely did not come from nowhere. At the time, he had sincerely believed that his only chance in making any kind of difference was in persuading his father about the rightness of his cause, not in keeping silent and hiding his intention.

*

Perhaps the real problem was, he did not strangle the boy in him quickly enough, as his brother Aemon had counseled him to do. Aemon was the gentlest of men, but he knew that a certain amount of ruthlessness was required in a king.  _Kill the boy, and let the man be born. It takes a man to rule, an Aegon, not an Egg._

But what did this imply, exactly? That he should have been harsher to the dissenting lords in his effort to enact his reform? Or that he should have been harsher in killing his dream in its cradle, in realizing that his dream for a better realm, with peace, prosperity and justice for all, could never have been achieved in this world, in the world as it was?

*

If his disillusionment was gradual, then his path to destruction was equally gradual, equally slow-moving. There was never a point where he said to himself:  _Tyranny. Tyranny is the only answer. Only tyranny, absolute power and bloody violence would allow me to do what I must do, for the most vulnerable of my people._

They had called him a tyrant long before he did anything even remotely resembling tyranny, those dissenting lords. They had dubbed him “a bloody-handed tyrant intent on depriving us of our gods-given rights and liberties” long before there was any trace of blood on his hands.

*

“What would you do with a dragon?” questioned Ser Duncan.

“It is not about what I would do with a dragon. I need not do anything with it at all. The mere  _presence_  of one would be enough to –“

“To terrify the dissenters into submission?”

“You know me. You know that I would not use the dragon for evil purposes. You know my dream for the realm. You  _share_ my dream.”

“I know you, but I do not know the dragon.”  _Nor do I know what you would be with a dragon to wield as your weapon._


End file.
